OFFICIAL SUBMISSION

OF THE BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA ON

BEHALF OF CUBA, BOLIVIA, ECUADOR AND
NICARAGUA; ALBA - PTT MEMBER STATES,
TO THE UNFCCC AD-HOC WORKING GROUP ON
LONG-TERM COOPERATIVE ACTION

26 APRIL 2010

We, the representatives of the Governments of Bolivia, Cuba,

Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, Member States of the
Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’
Trade Treaty (ALBA – PTT), in the Caracas Bicentennial
Manifesto, signed on April 19, 2010, welcomed the initiative of the
President of the Pluri-national State of Bolivia, Evo Morales, to
call the First People’s World Conference on Climate Change and
the Rights of Mother Earth, held in Cochabamba, on April 19-22,
2010.

There, over 30,000 people, representatives of social and

environmental organizations and indigenous groups, met and
organized the “Peoples’ World Movement for Mother Earth.”

We, the Governments of ALBA – PTT, make these voices our

own, and express our expectations with regard to the agreement
resulting from these negotiations that we expect to be
successfully completed at the 16th Session of the Conference of
the Parties, in Cancún, Mexico, in the shape of a fair, balanced
and legally binding agreement, which complements and
strengthens the regulations in force composed of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the
Kyoto Protocol.

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SHARED VISION

Our Mother Earth is injured and the future of humanity is

endangered as a result of climate change caused by a predatory
capitalist system.

Today, we face the ultimate crisis of a development model based

on submissiveness and destruction of human beings and nature
sped up by the industrial revolution.

The capitalist system has imposed upon us the logic of endless

competition, progress and growth. Such production and
consumption system seeks unlimited profit; detaches human
beings from nature; establishes a logic of domination and turns
everything into a commodity –water, land, the human genome,
ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, peoples’ rights,
death and life.

Under capitalism, Mother Earth is just the source of raw materials

and human beings are just means of production and consumers.

Should global warming increase by more than 2º C, there is a

50% chance the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be
totally irreversible. Therefore, a future commitment based on an
increase of 2° C is unacceptable.

Humanity is at the crossroads –to continue on the way of

capitalism, predation and death, or take the way of harmony with
nature and respect for life.

We have proposed the peoples of the world the recovery,

revalorization and strengthening of knowledge, wisdom and
ancestral practices of the indigenous peoples, reasserted in the

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experience and proposal of “Living Well,” acknowledging Mother
Earth as a living being, with which we have an indivisible, inter-
dependent, complementary and spiritual relationship.

The shared vision should ensure compliance with Article 2 of

the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change, which provides for the need to achieve, “stabilization of
greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that
would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the
climate system.”

Our future vision, based on the principle of historical and

common but differentiated responsibilities, requires
developed countries to commit themselves to concrete
quantified reduction targets of their emissions to get
greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere back to
300 ppm, thus limiting the increase of the global mean
temperature to well below 1.5° C, ideally stabilizing it at 1° C.

In emphasizing the urgent need to achieve this vision, developed

countries should undertake ambitious emissions reductions
targets in order to attain short-term objectives, keeping our vision
in favor of a balanced climate system on Earth, in accordance
with the ultimate objective of the Convention.

The “shared vision” for the Long-Term Cooperation Action in

climate change negotiations, should not be limited to defining
limits to the increase of temperature and greenhouse gas
concentrations in the atmosphere. Rather, it should include, in a
comprehensive and balanced manner, a set of financial and
technological measures, adaptation, capacity building,
production and consumption patterns, and other essential
subjects, such as the acknowledgement of the rights of

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Mother Earth, to restore harmony with nature.
Developed countries, the main responsible of climate
change, assuming their historical and present
responsibilities, should bear the adaptation debt related to
the impacts of climate change on developing countries and
supply the means to prevent, minimize and respond to the
damages arising from their excessive emissions.

LINKAGE BETWEEN THE LONG-TERM SHARED VISION AND

THE KYOTO PROTOCOL

The upcoming Conference on Climate Change to be held at

the end of 2010 in Mexico should approve the amendment to
the Kyoto Protocol, for the second commitment period
beginning in 2013, whereby developed countries should
embark upon significant domestic reductions of at least 50%
against the baseline year of 1990.

Therefore, there is the need to set first, a global target for all
developed countries, and then apportion an individual quota for
each of them, ensuring comparability of efforts between them,
thus keeping the Kyoto Protocol system for emissions reduction.

The prior definition of such commitments under the Kyoto

Protocol is essential, as a starting point, to establish a long-
term shared vision.

ADAPTATION

The peoples of ALBA – PTT reiterate the priority importance that

should be given to adaptation in the future negotiations and the

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need to delve into the vulnerability issue as well.

Our proposal entails the inclusion of a definition of environmental

vulnerability as the ability of a environmental, social and economic
system to cope with an impact or risk, taking into consideration
environmental integrity and how it is affected by anthropogenic
and natural threats.

We reject the notion of adaptation to climate change understood

as our acquiescence to the impacts caused by the historical
emissions from developed countries.

The impacts and their cost on developing countries, as well as the

specific needs of any impacts, should be assessed and valued.
Also, the technological and financial support of developed
countries should be recorded and monitored.

As to the latter, development and dissemination of measures,

methodologies and tools, including economic diversification,
to increase resilience and reduce environmental, social and
economic impacts should be specifically promoted.

The Adaptation Fund should be enhanced as an exclusive fund

to face climate change and as an integral part of a financial
mechanism managed and led by our States in a sovereign,
transparent and equitable manner.

The Adaptation Fund should also manage a facility to remedy

the damages caused by any impacts, including lost profit,
compensation for extreme and gradual climate events, and any
additional costs which may arise if our planet exceeds the
ecological thresholds. Likewise, those impacts that are curbing
the right to Living Well, in the context of our legitimate right to

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sustainable development, should be considered.

The chapter on Adaptation to Climate Change should state that

the priority resource allocation should be made in a balanced,
equitable manner, bearing in mind the criteria set forth in the
document entitled “Strategic Priorities, Policies and Guidelines of
the Adaptation Fund,” adopted by the Meeting of the Parties to
the Kyoto Protocol, particularly considering, among others:

(a) Levels of vulnerability;

(b) Level of urgency and risks arising from delayed resource
allocation;
(c) Adaptative capacity to adapt to the adverse effects of
climate change.

FORESTS

The definition of forests including plantations, as proposed

by some countries during the negotiations is unacceptable.
Monocultures are not forests. Therefore, we require for the
purposes of negotiations, a definition where native forests,
the jungle and the diversity of the ecosystems on Earth are
recognized.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous

Peoples should be fully acknowledged, implemented and
added to the negotiating texts on climate change. A good
strategy and action to prevent deforestation and degradation and
protect native forests and the jungle is to recognize the individual
rights, enshrined in several national laws and regulations, of
indigenous peoples and nations, where most natural forests and
jungles are located.

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Polluting countries must directly transfer financial and
technological resources to pay for restoration and conservation of
forests and jungles, in favor of indigenous peoples and ancestral
original social structures. This shall be a direct compensation,
additional to the funding sources committed by developed
countries in this regard, outside of the carbon market.

CLIMATE MIGRANTS

Developed countries should assume their responsibility

towards climate migrants, admitting them to their territories
and acknowledging their fundamental rights through
international agreements stating the definition of climate
migrant so that all States should abide by their provisions
and protect this population.

FINANCING

Developed countries should provide a new, public sourced

annual financing, additional to the Official Development
Assistance. The financial support to fight climate change in
developing countries, should be as significant as the
amounts that developed countries devote to war and defense
budgets.

Since the current mechanism has proven to be ineffective, at the

Mexico Conference, a new financial mechanism, operating
under the authority of the Conference of the Parties to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
should be established. The mechanism should be accountable

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to said Conference, with a substantial representation of
developing countries to enforce the financing commitments of the
Annex 1 countries.

Financing should be direct, from public funds, and it should not be

conditioned to additional benefits for developed countries. Neither
States sovereignty nor self-determination of communities and
most affected groups should be disturbed by means of other
mechanisms. Such mechanisms, if any, should be voluntary and
regulated in accordance with the principles of the Convention and
international law.

TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFER

Enforceability of the undertakings of developed countries at the

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change with
regard to technology transfer and development is a must. Hence,
setting clear guidelines and creating a multilateral, multitask
mechanism for the participatory control, management and
continued evaluation of the technological exchange by developed
countries, and also of the support for development of in-house
technologies in developing countries, are essential.

These technologies should be useful, clean and socially suitable.

The establishment of a fund for funding and inventory of
appropriate technologies, free from intellectual property rights,
particularly patents, is also essential. Rather than private
monopolies, they should come in the public domain, of ready
access and low cost.

FINAL REMARKS

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The future of all humankind is endangered and we cannot accept
that a small number of developed countries intend to define an
international regime, without the participation of the rest of the
world, as they unsuccessfully tried to do at the 15th Session of the
Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen.

In the advent of this new stage of the negotiations on climate

change, the Governments of the ALBA – PTT Member States
reject any attempt at violation of the Charter of the United Nations
and we call into question the practice of a “selective diplomacy”
implemented by the Presidency of COP 15. These practices
seriously endanger the basic rules of multilateral system.

We uphold our constructive commitment to a negotiation process

based on transparency, inclusiveness, legitimacy and democracy;
to recover confidence among any and all the Parties to the
Convention, and reach in Cancún an agreement that will enable
to urgently and effectively address climate change and its
devastating effects.

All of the foregoing are submitted to the Secretariat of the

Convention to be considered in future works, in accordance with
paragraph 5 of the Conclusions on organization and methods of
work in 2010 adopted by the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-
Term Cooperative Action (AWG LCA) on April 11, 2010, at the
end of its ninth session and, further, the Secretariat is requested
to release and disseminate this formal submission.

The Government of the Pluri-national State of Bolivia; the

Government of the Republic of Cuba; the Government of the
Republic of Ecuador; the Government of the Republic of
Nicaragua; and the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of

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Venezuela.

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